Very sad news indeed. Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore International and the man behind Atari, has passed away this past weekend. At 83, he passed away, surrounded by family and friends. People like this don't come in dozens, so we lost one of the great men of computing.

My father was a big fan of their calculators. He used one up until it up and died and he replaced it with an HP 15C and then a 48G, which he never really warmed to as it wasn't really a keystroke calculator.

My first computer was a KIM-1, from MOS, and my primary teething machines were early PETs. Even with just 8K and the little chiclet keyboards, the machines were real wonders. The integrated tape recorder pretty much always worked flawlessly, something I could never really say about other tape interfaces. Auto start, auto stop, no volume control - they just worked. The graphic character set let us write all sorts of nifty games and utilities. The mono display was always nice and sharp. Far better than what TVs could provide.

I later jumped to the dark side and got an Atari 800, this was pre-C64. But even then I never warmed to the C64, I was always enraptured by the Atari hardware. I loved the Display List. However at $595, the C64 was an absolute steal and it was right for them to sell them by the truckload.

We're going through the home computer revolution again today, the world of the old school 8-bits. Only now it's in the mobile environment, and the machines are just that much less accessible due to the difficulty in programming them. But still, we're in that age of new wonders every quarter combined with balkanization of platforms and idioms. It's an exciting time.

Sad to see old luminaries pass, but was exciting to share the world with them.

When I read the thread on SlashDotOrg about this, not one KIM-1 owner posted. Made me think that the old timers no longer existed there.

The KIM-1 I owned was used as the brains for a large robot my friend Steve and I built. However the cheap 5v relays we used melted under the load of the motors and since we wired the relay directly to the chip outputs we ended up burning out the interface

Today of-course I know better and would have used those relays to control higher current handling relays that in turn would have controlled the motors.

Maybe because some of us were playing with different things like the Altair? My first real "PC" was the VIC which of course was easy to talk my parents into thanks to not only the price but being plugged by The Shat, i mean if its good enough for Kirk right?

Frankly I never thought Tramiel got the credit he deserved. before old Jack and Commodore computers were strictly the toys for the rich, common folks really couldn't afford them. it was Tramiel that really gave us the first computer that anybody could afford and thanks to that computers suddenly sprung up everywhere, there were clubs in even the small towns, stores everywhere had the VIC and mags popped up overnight giving us all tons of programs to type in and try.

RIP computer man, thanks to you a lifetime love of computers was born in many and you in no small part paved the way to computers being as common as TVs.

Jack Tramiel crossed over from Commodore to Atari very shortly after my father thought we should have a computer and we bought an Atari 800XL. We were shocked, first to hear that we had bought from a bankrupt company, and then at how Tramiel slashed the prices. :-) It was a rough introduction to how the computer industry worked, and how my coming years would be. But when he introduced the Atari ST line, I thought it was the most beautiful looking computer ever made, and the corresponding XE line only slightly less so. I still do, so thanks for that, and for keeping Atari alive another decade.

So sad yet its inevitable that those people who we idolized during our childhood are starting to die of old age.

Ahh the old Commodore vs Atari wars in the early 80's. It was quite something when Tramiel "switched sides" in 1984.

Personally this makes me more sad than when Steve Jobs passed away, since in my case Tramiel/Commodore molded my childhood fascination with computers (via the PET's and my first computer the VIC-20), which ultimately lead to my career in the computer science field.

However I suppose we will not hear much in the mainstream media even though Jack and Commodore helped make the home computer affordable to most people. Since Commodore went bankrupt in '94 history gets written by those that remain.

Ahh the old Commodore vs Atari wars in the early 80's. It was quite something when Tramiel "switched sides" in 1984.

Isn't it a bit of paradox, that Commodore's "flagship" has been designed by former Atari employees (associates?) - I mean Jay Miner's team - and Atari's "flagship" (ST) has been built by the people (when left Commodore along with Tramiel), that made C-64?

"Ahh the old Commodore vs Atari wars in the early 80's. It was quite something when Tramiel "switched sides" in 1984.

Isn't it a bit of paradox, that Commodore's "flagship" has been designed by former Atari employees (associates?) - I mean Jay Miner's team - and Atari's "flagship" (ST) has been built by the people (when left Commodore along with Tramiel), that made C-64? "

I was actually irritated by that. I didn't know until years later that Jay Miner had created both the Atari 8-bit Line and the Amiga Line.

Looking back at it, it was obvious though. I had an Atari 800XL, which I absolutely loved. So many things on that looked fantastic, and I recall my friend having so many issues with his Commodore 64 (remember the speed load cartridge you absolutely HAD to have?)

Well, when it came time for the 16bit systems to come out, I naturally followed the Atari brand, and he followed the Amiga brand. The Amigas were particularly better than the Atari ST in Graphics and Sound. I had managed though to get the Atari Mega STe, which had comparable palette and stereo sound. Alas (yeah, I had to use that word, it's too unused), most software didn't support the extended features of the STe, not to mention some weird compatibility issues.

Now I still have my Mega STe, plus an Atari TT030. But I had to add to my collection an Amiga A4000D, which I've upgraded with PCI and a Radeon + Network card.

Even though it still has the stock CPU, it seems faster than my Core 2 Quad in some ways.

Hats off to you Jack Tramiel, for helping the computer industry along.

Seems Atari only really went down hill after the ownership was passed onto Sam Tramiel.

So sad yet its inevitable that those people who we idolized during our childhood are starting to die of old age.

I don't know if "idolized" is really the correct word when it comes to Jack Tramiel. Chuck Peddle and Jay Miner, sure, but Jack? Jack was one mean businessman, but he made plenty of mistakes (backwards compatibility issues being the biggest).

That's not to say I don't think Jack was a great man who did a hell of a job with Commodore Business Machines and Atari, but I do believe that if he'd only listened to his engineers a little better, Jack Tramiel could've given Steve Jobs a run for his money!

I don't know if "idolized" is really the correct word when it comes to Jack Tramiel. Chuck Peddle and Jay Miner, sure, but Jack? Jack was one mean businessman, but he made plenty of mistakes (backwards compatibility issues being the biggest).

That is very true. But, I think it is today we idolize the engineers. In 1982 as a early teen I do not remember us knowing of the engineers (remember there was no internet or wikipedia available to us). Most news we heard (through magazines presumably) would always mention Jack Tramiel, or perhaps the name of the marketing person at Commodore that was quoted.

It wasn't until the C128 and Amiga with the easter eggs and signatures in plastic that we learned about those engineers that made it all possible.

Of course now we realize the full story through the internet and great books like "On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore".

I have a Atari 600XL and a 800XL with boatloads of hardware add-ons, Also an Amiga A1200 with 030 accelerator/expansions and such. I still use all of them even now and they all work flawlessly like they did when they left the factory. They knew how to make em back then!
This is is sad news indeed. RIP Jack, may you find the golden keyboard of eternity.

I understand. I have a PET 2001 N32 (With the Skyles Electric works V4 Basic chip), a CBM 8032, A 2040 disk drive (software upgraded to 4040), a 1541, a 1581, a printer (forgot the number) and even a 128. Most of it works. The 8032 and 2040 have some RAM chip problems and don't recognize all of their memory, but all still power up. I have pictures of my 7 year old playing on the PET. It is so cool.

Don't even get me started on how great I loved and respected the Commodore computer line! I cut my teeth in middle school on a Commodore 64. After that, I upgraded to a Commodore 128D in High school. In college, I had a Commodore 500+ and a Commodore 2000 before Commodore went bust in the early 90s. To this day, I contend that Commodore's computing technology was superior in every way shape and form to anything available at that time from Wintel or Apple. Jack Tramiel was truly a visionary and I am saddened by his loss.

Yes, he led two of the companies which produced some of the computers some of us cherished in our kid years, but that is a far from being a technological "innovator."

at Commodore 64 - 25th Anniversary Celebration Steve Wozniak noted that the Apple II was cheaper to build than the PET 2001 and sold for three times the price. "We wanted to build a company that would be around for awhile," he poked Jack.

call him as you like but he was major person that made personal computer revolution possible and widespread

and innovator was Jack's chef engineer Shiraz Shivji. He, with 5 other engineers, design ST in 6 months: ST had 10% faster CPU, 30% bigger resolution, DMA 10Mbit/s port, 4 x more memory and cost 2.5 LESS than original Mac which was designed for 3-4 years... at the end, ST could run Mac software, just faster and in bigger resolution

The first amiga, A1000 requires kickstart-disks and was an annoyance.
Later they fixed some of the obscurities, and released A500. The amiga 500 is the sole reason for the amigas good reputation.
We can clearly see that they were lucky.
Later models were not that popular, and some flopped totally.
In the A4000, their last top model, they still had the 8bit sound of the A1000, while the rest of computing world had moved to 16bit. So don`t say they wasn`t greedy in whatever department.

Commodore is often critizised for clowing around with their business, but clearly they clowned around with the engineering aswell.

So their two sucesses was c64 and a500. The rest was flops (?).

C`mon people, it`s just a PC. If they indeed were so good, they could repeat the success on modern hardware, and new OS, but they don`t.

Anyway, if you want to know why people liked these vintage machines, config a linux kernel for low latency. (standard kernel will do). And it will feel very much like many of those wellprogrammed assemblycoded apps/demos/games, that were responsive on that hardware.

So there is absolutely no reason to be stuck in the past.

Btw, does anyone know if the story that "someone just came in and did "component X" in the OS, and left again" and that component X is a vital part of the amigas responsiveness, is true? So the "innovation" seems rather random aswell.

The S-DSP is capable of producing and mixing 8 simultaneous voices at any relevant pitch and volume in 16-bit stereo at a sample rate of 32 kHz. It has support for voice panning, ADSR envelope control, echo with filtering (via a programmable 8-tap FIR), and using noise as sound source (useful for certain sound effects such as wind). S-DSP sound samples are stored in RAM in compressed (BRR) format. Communications between the S-SMP and the S-DSP are carried out via memory-mapped I/O.

Snes Released 21. november 1990.

Amiga 4000, released 1992. Same old faggot 8bit 4chan chip. TWO YEARS LATER. And the Amiga 4000 was exceedingly expensive..

I really wont like to turn this thread in technical discussion but in short:

Jack T. has nothing with Amiga. Regarding sound, Atari Corp. produce Atari Falcon030 computer in 1992. that could do 16bit, 44.1KHz 16 channel harddisc audio recording; plus it could do realtime effects thanx to built in DSP.

Something that PC will do in years to come...

Thanx to DSP Falcon could also play MP3 in full quality (something that require at least 486 DX4/100MHz that come out in years...).

@tylerdurden according to many resources on internet, Shiraz have six engineers that design complete ST hardware. There was also software group of ~15 people that port (and finished) DRI GEM OS.

Yes I remember some guys around here had the falcon. It was little known though. But yes it had 16bit sound, as I said, everyone had moved to 16 bit then. Soundblaster 16 was also available for PC, although probably mostly usable in dos. Windows had many years, probably until XP, before it was fully usable with multimedia.

Was it really that noisy? Sounds like monitor hum there among other things.
They should have implemented DSP to lessen it, limiter etc, or maybe balanced outs.
Still would have been cooler than a lot of h/w at the time, and the file could have been written digitally.